Piri Halasz

In 1966, Piri Halasz became the first woman in living memory to write a cover story for Time, its famous one on "Swinging London." She was then asked by Coward McCann to write A Swinger's Guide to London (first ed. 1967, pb reprint, 2010). Ms. Halasz has told how the Time cover came to be, and discussed its impact, in the first third of A Memoir of Creativity: abstract painting, politics & the media, 1956-2008 (iUniverse, 2009). Since leaving Time in 1969, she has become an art critic and historian, with a PhD in art history from Columbia University, more than 200 hardcopy articles in magazines from Smithsonian to ARTnews, and a blog, From the Mayor's Doorstep (http://pirihalasz.com). The purpose of the memoir is to publicize her radical theory on abstract painting. She argues that instead of being non-representational, abstract painting can be seen as a new, richer form of representation,& she integrates this theory into recent American political and social developments.